The Winter of the Witch Page 10

  The domovaya, a little subdued, returned to the iron-bound chest. This time, boy’s clothes appeared: loose trousers and sash, kaftan, even boots—good leather sapogi. They were badly creased, yellowed with time, but unworn. Vasya frowned. Bits of herbs were one thing, but this? Sturdy garments, sewn with a competent hand, out of close-woven linen and thick wool?

  They even fit.

  “Did—” Vasya could scarce credit it. She peered down at herself. She was warm, clean, rested, alive, clothed. “Did someone know I was coming?” The question was ridiculous; the clothes were older than she was. And yet…

  The domovaya shrugged.

  “Who was your mistress?” Vasya asked. “Who had this house before?”

  The domovaya only looked at her blankly. “Are you sure it’s not you? I almost remember you.”

  “I’ve never been here before,” said Vasya. “Can’t you remember?”

  “I remember existing,” returned the domovaya, a little affronted. “I remember these walls, my key. I remember names and shadows in the fire. Nothing more.” She looked distressed; Vasya, in courtesy, let the subject drop. With gritted teeth, she concentrated on getting woolen stockings and sapogi onto her torn and burned feet. Gingerly, she put her feet to the floor, then stood and winced. “Now if only I could float along like the devil that cannot touch the earth,” she said, trying a few limping steps.

  The domovaya thrust an old reed basket into Vasya’s hands. “If you want supper, you will have to find it,” she said. There was a strange note in her voice. She pointed at the woods.

  Vasya could hardly bear the thought of going gathering in her current state. But she knew it would only be worse the next day, as her bruises stiffened.

  “Very well,” she said.

  The domovaya looked suddenly anxious. “Beware the forest,” she added, following Vasya to the door. “It does not take kindly to strangers. Safer to come back by nightfall.”

  “What happens at nightfall?” asked Vasya.

  “The—the season will turn,” said the domovaya, twisting her hands together.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You cannot get back, if the season turns. Or you can, but by then it will be someplace different.”

  “How—different?”

  “Different!” cried the domovaya, and stamped her foot. “Now go!”

  “Very well,” said Vasya, placating. “I will be back by nightfall.”

  11.

  Of Mushrooms

  FOOD IN THE FOREST IS at its scarcest at the end of winter, and Vasya could barely touch anything with her blistered hands. But she must try or starve, and so she let herself be urged out the door.

  The cool morning, pale as pearl, threw tendrils of mist over the blue-gray ice. Ancient trees ringed the frozen water; their dark limbs seemed to hold up the sky. Frost silvered the earth, and all around was the whisper of water, breaking loose winter’s bonds. A thrush called from within the wood. There was no sign of the horses.

  Vasya might have stood on the rotten steps until she froze, forgetting sorrow in the pure and untouched beauty. But her stomach reminded her. She must live. And to live, she must eat. Determinedly, she went into the forest.

  In another life, Vasya had wandered the woods of Lesnaya Zemlya in all its seasons. In spring, she would walk in the wild places, sun in her hair, and sometimes call greetings to her friend the rusalka, coming awake from her long sleep. But Vasya was not soft-footed now. She limped. Every step seemed to uncover a new pain. Her father would have mourned, for his light-footed, lighthearted child was gone and would not return.

  There were no people and, out of sight of the house, no sign that there ever had been. Walking in solitary silence loosened the chokehold of rage and terror and grief on Vasya’s soul. She began to consider the shape of the land and wonder where food might be had.

  A breath of wind, incongruously warm, riffled her hair. She was well out of sight of the house now. A patch of dandelion was flowering in a sunlit gap between the trees. Startled, Vasya bent and plucked the leaves. So early? She ate one of the flowers as she walked, chewing gingerly with her sore jaw.

  Another patch of dandelions. Wild onion. The sun was over the treetops now. There—young dock, leaves curling. And—wild strawberries? Vasya halted. “It is too early,” she murmured.

  It was. And there—mushrooms? Beliye? The tops of their pale heads just showed above a heap of dead leaves. Her mouth watered. She went to cut them, then looked again. One had spots that seemed to glisten strangely in the sun.

  Not spots. Eyes. The largest of the mushrooms peered up at her, eyes a livid scarlet. Not a mushroom at all, but a chyert, scarcely the length of her forearm. A mushroom-spirit, glaring, shook himself free of the leaf-litter. “Who are you?” His voice was shrill. “Why have you come into my woods?”

  His woods? “Trespasser!” he squeaked, and Vasya realized he was frightened.

  “I didn’t know they were your woods.” She showed the chyert empty hands, knelt stiffly so he could see her better. The cold moss soaked through the knees of her leggings. “I mean no harm. I am only looking for food.”

  The mushroom-spirit blinked, said, “Not exactly my woods—” and then added, hastily, “But it doesn’t matter; you can’t be here.”

  “Not even if I make an offering?” asked Vasya. She put a perfect dandelion down before the creature.

  The chyert touched the flower with a grayish finger. His outline solidified; now he resembled a small person more than a mushroom. He looked down at himself, and back at her, in puzzlement.

  Then he flung away the flower. “I don’t believe you!” he cried. “Do you think to make me do your bidding? You will not! I don’t care how many offerings you give me. The Bear is free. He says we are striking a blow for ourselves now. If we join him we will make men believe in us again. We will be worshipped again, and have no need to make bargains with witches.”

  Vasya, rather than answer, got hurriedly to her feet. “How exactly are you striking a blow for yourselves?” Wary, she looked about her but nothing stirred. There were only birds, flitting, and strong, steady sunlight.

  A pause. “We will do great and terrible deeds,” said the mushroom-spirit.

  Vasya tried not to sound impatient. “What does that mean?”

  The mushroom-spirit threw his head back proudly, but he didn’t actually answer. Perhaps he didn’t know.

  Great and terrible deeds? Vasya kept an eye on the silent forest. In the midst of loss and injury and terror, she had not stopped to consider the implications of her last night in Moscow. What had Morozko set in motion by freeing the Bear? What did it mean, for herself, for her family, and for Rus’?

  Why had he done it?

  Some part of her whispered—He loves you and so gave his freedom. But that could not be the only reason. She was not so vain as to think the winter-king would risk all he had long defended for a mortal maiden.

  More important than why, what was she going to do about it?

  I must find the winter-king, she thought. The Bear must be bound once more. But she didn’t know how to do either of those things; she was wounded still, and hungry.

  “What makes you think I want you to do my bidding?” Vasya inquired of the mushroom-spirit. He had subsided under a log while she thought; she could just see the gleam of his eyes peeping out. “Who told you that?”

  The mushroom-spirit poked his head out, scowled. “No one. I am no fool. What else would a witch want? Why else would you have taken the road through Midnight?”

  “Because I fled for my life,” said Vasya. “I only came into the forest because I am hungry.” To illustrate, she took a handful of spruce-tips from her basket and began determinedly chewing.

  The mushroom-spirit, still suspicious, said, “I can show you where better food is growing. If, as
you say, you are hungry.” He was watching her closely.

  “I am,” said Vasya at once, getting to her feet. “I would be glad of a guide.”

  “Well,” said the chyert, “follow me then.” He darted off at once into the undergrowth.

  Vasya, after a moment’s thought, followed, but she kept the lake always in sight. She did not trust the forest’s hostile silence and she did not trust the little mushroom-spirit.

  * * *

  VASYA’S MISTRUST SOON MINGLED with amazement, for she found herself in a land of wonders. The spruce-tips were green and tender; dandelions nodded in the breeze off the lake. She ate and gathered and ate, and then she realized suddenly that there was a sprawl of blueberries at her feet, more strawberries hidden beneath the damp grass. Not spring anymore, but summer.

  “What is this place?” Vasya asked the mushroom-spirit. In her mind, she had begun calling him Ded Grib: Grandfather Mushroom.

  He gave her an odd look. “The land between noon and midnight. Between winter and spring. The lake lies at the center. All lands touch, here at the water, and you can step from one to the other.”

  A country of magic, such as she had once dreamed of.

  After an instant of awed silence, Vasya asked, “If I go far enough will I reach the country of winter?”

  “Yes,” said the chyert, though he looked dubious. “It is far to walk.”

  “Is the winter-king there?”

  Ded Grib gave her another odd look. “How would I know? I cannot grow in the snow.”

  Thinking, frowning, Vasya returned her attention to filling her basket and her belly. She found cresses and cowslips, blueberries and gooseberries and strawberries.

  Deeper she went into the summertime forest. How happy Solovey would have been, she thought, while her feet bruised the tender grass. Perhaps together we could have gone to find his kin. Sorrow drained away her pleasure in the sun on her back, in the sun-ripened strawberry between her lips. But she kept gathering. The warm, green world quieted her wounded spirit. Ded Grib was sometimes visible, sometimes not; he liked to hide under logs. But always she could sense him watching: curious, untrusting.

  When the sun was high overhead, she remembered caution, and her promise to the domovaya. She had not yet regained her strength, and that she would need, whatever came next. “I have all I need,” she said. “I must get back.”

  Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump. “You haven’t come to the best part,” he protested, pointing to a distant flash of trees clad in scarlet and gold. As though autumn, like summer, was a place you could walk into. “A little farther.”

  Vasya was intensely curious. She also thought hungrily of chestnuts and pine-nuts. But caution won. “I have learned the cost of being reckless,” she told Ded Grib. “I have enough, for one day.”

  He looked disgruntled, but said nothing else. Reluctantly, Vasya turned back the way she had come. It was hot in this summer country. She was dressed for early spring, in wool shirt and stockings. Her laden basket swung from her arm. Her feet throbbed now; her ribs ached.

  To her left, the forest whispered, and watched. To her right lay the lake, summer-blue. Between the trees, she glimpsed a little sandy cove. Thirsty, Vasya strayed nearer the water, knelt, drank. The water was clear as air, so cold it made her teeth ache. Her bandages itched. The sponge-bath that morning had done nothing to ease her bone-deep sense of filth.

  Abruptly, Vasya stood and began to strip. The domovaya would be cross with her for undoing all the careful wrapping, but Vasya couldn’t bring herself to care. Her hands were trembling with eagerness. As though the clean water could scour both the dirt from her skin and memory from her mind.

  “What are you doing?” asked Ded Grib. He was staying well away from the sand and the rocks, hiding in the shade.

  “I am going to swim,” said Vasya.

  Ded Grib opened his mouth, closed it again.

  Vasya paused. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

  The mushroom-spirit shook his head, slowly, but he gave the water a nervous look. Perhaps he didn’t like water.

  “Well,” said Vasya. She hesitated, but Mother of God, she wanted to peel off her own skin and become someone else; a plunge in the lake might at least quiet her mind. “I won’t go far. Perhaps you will look after my basket?”

  * * *

  SHE WADED IN. AT FIRST, she walked on rocks, wincing. Then the bottom became slick mud. She dove and came up yelling. The freezing lake closed her lungs and set her senses ablaze. She put her back to the shore and swam. The water delighted her, beneath the heat of the unaccustomed sun. But it was very cold. At last she halted, ready to turn back, scrub herself in the shallows, lie drying in the sun…

  But when she turned, all she saw was water.

  Vasya spun in a circle. Nothing. It was as though the whole world had sunk suddenly into the lake. For a few moments she treaded water, shocked, beginning to be afraid.

  Perhaps she was not alone.

  “I mean no harm,” said Vasya aloud, trying to ignore her chattering teeth.

  Nothing happened. Vasya paddled in a circle again. Still nothing. Panic in this cold water and she was as good as dead. She must simply take her best guess and pray.

  With a splash like a shout, a creature shot out of the water in front of her. Two slitted nostrils lay between its bulbous eyes; its teeth were the color of rock, hooked over a narrow jaw. When it exhaled, its breath steamed and oily liquid ran down its face.

  “I am going to drown you,” it whispered, and lunged.

  Vasya made no answer; instead her cupped hand came down on the water like a thunderclap. The chyert jerked back and Vasya snapped, “An immortal sorcerer could not kill me and neither could a priest with all Moscow at his beck—what makes you think you can?”

  “You came into my lake,” returned the chyert, baring black teeth.

  “To swim, not to die!”

  “That is for me to decide.”

  Vasya tried to ignore the goad of her aching ribs and to speak calmly. “For trespassing, I am guilty before you, but I do not owe you my life.”

  The chyert breathed scalding steam onto Vasya’s face. “I am the bagiennik,” he growled. “And I tell you your life is forfeit.”

  “Try and take it then,” snapped Vasya. “But I am not afraid of you.”

  The chyert lowered his head, churning the blue water to froth. “Are you not? What did you mean that the immortal sorcerer could not kill you?”

  Vasya’s legs were on the edge of cramping. “I killed Kaschei Bezsmertnii in Moscow on the last night of Maslenitsa.”

  “Liar!” snapped the bagiennik, and lunged again, nearly swamping her.

  Vasya didn’t flinch. Much of her concentration was taken with staying above water. “Liar I have been,” she said, “and I have paid for it. But about this I am telling the truth: I killed him.”

  The bagiennik shut his mouth abruptly.

  Vasya turned away, looking for the shore.

  “I know you now,” murmured the bagiennik. “You have the look of your family. You took the road through Midnight.”

  Vasya had no time for the bagiennik’s revelations. “I did,” she managed. “But my family is far away. As I said, I mean no harm. Where is the shore?”

  “Far away? Near at hand too. You understand neither yourself nor the nature of this place.”

  She was beginning to sink lower in the water. “Grandfather, the shore.”

  The bagiennik’s black teeth shone with water. He slid nearer, moving like a water-snake. “Come, it will be quick. Drown, and I will live a thousand years on the memory of your blood.”

  “No.”

  “What use are you otherwise?” demanded the bagiennik, gliding nearer and nearer still. “Drown.”

  Vasya was using the last of her strength
just to keep her numb limbs churning. “What use am I? None. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and the world has no place for me. And yet, as I said before, I am still not going to die to please you.”

  The bagiennik snapped his teeth right in her face, and Vasya, heedless of her wounds, caught him round the neck. He thrashed and almost threw her loose. But he didn’t. In her hands was the strength that had broken the bars of her cage in Moscow. “You will not threaten me,” Vasya added, into the chyert’s ear, and sucked in a breath, just as they plunged. When they surfaced, the girl still clung. Gasping, she said, “I may die tomorrow. Or live to sour old age. But you are only a wraith in a lake, and you will not command me.”

  The bagiennik stilled and Vasya let go, coughing out water, feeling the strain in muscles along her broken side. Her nose and mouth were full of water. A few of her reopened cuts streamed blood. The bagiennik nosed at her bleeding skin. She didn’t move.

  With surprising mildness, the bagiennik said, “Perhaps you are not useless after all. I have not felt such strength since—” He broke off. “I will bring you to shore.” He looked suddenly eager.

  Vasya found herself clinging to a sinuous body, scorching hot. She shivered as life came back into her limbs. Warily, she said, “What did you mean, that I have the look of my family?”

  Undulating through the water, the bagiennik said, “Don’t you know?” There was a strange undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. “Once the old woman and her twins lived in the house by the oak-tree and tended the horses that graze on the lake-shore.”

  “What old woman? I have been to the house by the oak-tree and it is a ruin.”

  “Because the sorcerer came,” said the bagiennik. “A man, young and fair. He said he wished to tame a horse, but it was Tamara, her mother’s heir, whom he won over. They swam together in the lake at Midsummer; he whispered his promises in the autumn twilight. In the end, for his sake, Tamara put a golden bridle on the golden mare: the Zhar Ptitsa.”